7th may 2024
The Call for Papers for the 2025 Historical Fictions Research Conference in Manchester, UK, is now online. Please spread widely!
23RD APRIL 2024
Happy to announce that the Journal of Historical Fictions has a new editor. Stephanie Russo from Macquarie University is taking over. Welcome Stephanie!
18th March 2024
Invitation:
Histories at Risk has organised an online workshop on Conservative Public History taking place on Thursday 2oth June 2024 from 10h00 to 18h00 GMT. There will be speakers on the Theory and Practice of Conservative Public History as well as case studies from Spain, the UK, Brazil, Colombia, and Nigeria. Sign up for free here, and please circulate this invitation widely!
Across the world right-wing popular political movements are harnessing the past as a means for attacking and challenging liberal consensus. From the infiltration work of Restore Trust in the UK to the legislative attacks of Florida republicans, work in this area is increasingly purposeful and well organised.
Whilst conservative popular history is hardly new, increasingly the ‘weaponization’ of the past has become programmatic and performative. As neoliberal think tanks and groups increasingly collaborate and share practice, method and funding in their resistance to progressive institutions and research, attacks on historical understanding are becoming organised. Historical knowledge production and distribution is becoming strategically addressed by various groups. Conservative approaches to history in public are becoming more performative and need to be understood to be countered.
What does this mean for an understanding of public history? How is the past in public becoming utilised by right-wing actors? What does this mean for an understanding of public history’s activist, liberal, progressive aspects? Does an understanding of public history as something innately conservative challenge our paradigms for work in this area? What is the theory and practice of right-wing public history?
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/historiesatrisk/1194749#
13th March 2024
Save the Date! The HFRC 2025 will take place in Manchester on
13-14 February 2025. See you there!
29th FEbruary 2024
TinyLetters, which we currently use for our Newsletters, will discontinue its services. We will be moving our Newsletter to a new platform.
23rd February 2024
The Historical Fictions Research Network (HFRN) has officially launched a new book series with academic publisher Brill at the Annual Historical Fictions Research Conference in Malmö this Friday, February 23rd, 2024 . ‘Global Historical Fictions’ is now open for submissions! Two publications have already been commissioned. Please do consider submitting your proposals and manuscripts.
Historical fictions are booming – historical novels regularly feature on bestseller lists and are nominated for literary prizes. Films and TV dramas set in the past likewise enjoy growing prominence. Across a range of media, the past is increasingly perceived through imagining the unrecorded, by encountering re-imagined personalities and experiencing what it might have been like to be “there.” Popular history offers both recreation and re-creation. Therefore, fictional narratives and images often supersede scientific history in public consciousness, and support political claims, identities and agendas.
Emerging from the international and interdisciplinary Historical Fictions Research Network, the series has three overarching aims:
- To explore the impact of popular fictional forms in the shaping of popular perceptions of the past.
- To widen the range of media forms (particularly popular ones) that are recognised as crucial to the popular understanding of history.
- Though studies focusing on individual nation literatures and cultural forms are encouraged, to draw attention to the importance of transnational or international popular histories and thus to challenge the Western dominance of the field.
You may find all further information here.
on the same day
Members elected new and old trustees to the board. A warm welcome to Paul Csillag (European University Institute, Florence), who is joining the board as a trustee for the first time. Please find all information on current board members here. We would also like to thank former trustee Mara Dougall, who did not stand for re-election, for her service to the network!
22nd February 2024
The opening of 2024’s Annual Historical Fictions Research Conference (HFRC 2024) takes place tomorrow. The conference will be co-hosted by the University of Malmö and the Historical Fictions Research Network (HFRN). More than 60 delegates will travel to Sweden from all over the world. The conference will include a business meeting of the HFRN, where the board will present their plans to register the network as a charity, or incorporated charitable organisation (ICO).
9th December 2023
The Historical Fictions Research Network’s Inaugural, International, Interdisciplinary Online Workshop took place this Saturday. Fifteen delegates from all over the world and time zones spanning the globe took part in the one-day-event, discussing new and emerging issues and approaches to the field of historical fiction and historical narrative research.
1st November 2023
The Historical Fictions Research Network will launch a new book series with academic publisher Brill. The series, entitled ‘Global Historical Fictions’, will welcome both edited collections and monographs. Find more information here.
Launch of the News section
The Historical Fictions Research Network (HFRN) website now has a news section. Please return to this page at your leisure for all of our latest news. Do also consider signing up for newsletter.
Historical Fictions Research Network 